Rooftop
by alcimines
Summary: Wolverine and Nightcrawler are on a stakeout. When you're on a stakeout, you spend a lot of time talking to your partner - and sometimes, you end up revealing a lot about yourself.


ROOFTOP

_Author's Note: This was written right after X-Men 2. The friendship between Logan and Kurt was always one of my favorite parts of the X-Men comic books. Due either to time constraints, or a lack of interest by the writers and directors of the X-Men movies, it never had a chance to develop in the movies. This is my impression on how a friendship between Logan and Kurt might have worked out in the movie-verse._

Gazing down onto the street, Logan took a sip from a styrofoam coffee cup and then said, "Jeep, green paint job, Nebraska license plate, NIM-191."

Kurt used the eraser-end of a pencil to tap the information into a hand-held computer. Then he repeated it back to Logan. After Logan confirmed the data entry, Kurt saved the file.

"That is his fifth visitor this night. He's a busy man," Kurt said.

Logan nodded silently.

At first, it surprised everyone how good Logan and Kurt were at performing a stakeout. Kurt seemed too active and jovial for a job that usually meant long stretches of simply sitting and watching. And Logan definitely wasn't the person you immediately thought of when the phrase 'passive observation' was spoken.

As it turned out, Kurt was used to long periods of being alone with his thoughts. And like any predator, Logan was capable of inhuman patience when he was doing something that his hind-brain defined as 'hunting'.

It was a swelteringly hot Chicago summer night and Kurt and Logan were crouched together on the roof of a five-story apartment building. A house across the street was owned by the leader of a local anti-mutant group. That particular group was showing signs of a steady drift towards violence. Logan and Kurt's job was to keep tabs on who was coming and going from the house. The Professor had reason to believe that the most violent of the anti-mutant hate groups were exporting their 'expertise' to like-minded groups. If so, the Professor wanted to know who was doing the exporting.

Together, Logan and Kurt watched the man who had just got out of the jeep walk up to the front door of the home they were observing. After a brief wait, the door opened. The visitor walked inside and vanished.

Kurt and Logan settled back down. Kurt tucked the hand computer into his vest pocket and picked up his own coffee cup.

"Do you have any plans for when we return home?" asked Kurt idly. Kurt and Logan had been on this stakeout for a week. Scott and Bobby would be relieving them tomorrow morning.

"No, how about you?" replied Logan, his eyes still on the house.

"The Ringling Brothers circus is playing in Philadelphia. I was thinking of going to it."

A brief smile played across Logan's face, "You gonna take 'Ro?"

"If Ororo is interested, yes. Hopefully, she won't be too busy."

"I think she'll make time for you."

"I hope so," said Kurt.

The memory of his last night with Ororo played through Kurt's mind. The peculiarities of his body didn't seem to bother Ororo. In fact, she seemed attracted to them.

"You miss the circus?" Logan suddenly asked.

Kurt blinked in mild surprise and came back to the here-and-now. When he and Logan were together, he was normally the one who initiated a conversation. This was unusual.

"Yes," answered Kurt, "I do miss the high wire. And I enjoyed being a performer. It's difficult to explain, but the roar of the crowd is a wonderful thing. Addictive, actually."

"I didn't think of it that way."

Kurt cocked his head to one side and examined Logan's face closely, "You used to perform?"

Another smile quickly flickered on and off Logan's face, "Bare knuckle fighting. I went from bar-to-bar. The bar owners would set up a... a place where I'd fight anyone who was interested in trying to win some prize money."

"You didn't like it?"

"No."

"Then why did you do it?"

Logan shrugged, "Easy money. The more I won, the more I got paid."

"What was it like?"

"Ugly. The crowd just wanted to see blood. After a fight or two, they'd be crazy - in a frenzy. The guys who went up against me really didn't have a chance. Most of 'em couldn't fight. Not the way I fight. And they were usually drunk."

"I didn't know there were such things," said Kurt carefully, not wanting to offend Logan.

"It paid the bills."

Then Logan looked directly at Kurt, something he almost never did when they were on a stakeout.

"That's where I met Marie," he said.

Kurt set down his coffee cup. "What do you mean?"

"I was up in Alberta, in a wide spot in the road called Laughlin City. I was fighting in a bar on the edge of town. After I finished this one guy off, I looked up into the crowd and there she was."

Kurt nodded, "This was after she ran away from home. After she found out that she was a mutant."

"Yeah."

"You approached her?"

Logan shook his head, "Hell, no. I spent the rest of the night trying to ignore her."

"Why?"

With a snort, Logan looked back down to the street, "I figured she would be trouble."

"Hmm. From the stories I've heard, your judgment was correct."

Logan chuckled, but said nothing.

"So how did you and she end up together?"

"She stowed away in a trailer behind my truck. After I found her, she didn't give me any choice but to give her a ride."

Kurt smiled, "Our little Marie has a will of iron. You never stood a chance."

"Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to remember that she and the others - Peter, Jubes, Bobby, and Kitty - are still just kids."

"They would, perhaps, dispute that statement."

Logan shrugged and took another drink of coffee.

Kurt pursed his lips, examined the side of Logan's face for a moment, and then took the plunge, "Marie and Bobby are a good couple."

Somewhat to Kurt's surprise, Logan nodded immediately, "Yeah. He's been good to her."

"Forgive me if this question is indelicate, but do you suppose they have found a way to get around the... physical constraints... of their relationship?"

Logan looked heavenwards, "I heard Marie, Kitty, and Jubes talking about that just the other day."

Kurt almost spilled his coffee, "Oh, please, tell me that there was a tape-recorder going at the time!"

Both men laughed, but they carefully kept the volume down.

"No such luck," Logan said.

"Pity. So, did our three innocent, blushing maidens have anything interesting to say?"

"Well, I ain't gonna go into the details..."

"Blast you!"

They started laughing again. This time, it took a while to die down.

"...but let's just say it sounds like Marie has developed a good handle on the situation," finished Logan.

Sternly ordering himself not to pursue a particularly intense memory involving Ororo and a discretely located booth in one of the more decadent New York city nightclubs, Kurt kept his attention on what Logan was saying, "I suppose that is a good thing."

"Bobby probably thinks so."

"It does not bother you?"

Logan's eyes were slightly speculative as he examined Kurt's face, "I figure they're old enough."

"That's not what I meant."

Logan was silent for a long time. Kurt waited patiently.

"The first time she saw me, I was in a cage," Logan said finally.

Kurt frowned at the sudden change of subject and then leaned forward, "What do you mean?"

"The kind of fighting that I told you about. The kind I did up north. You do it in a cage."

"A cage? What kind of cage?"

"Bars and some kind of mesh. Maybe twenty foot by twenty foot square. A cage."

"And?"

Logan's eyes narrowed, "It was a fucking cage."

"Logan, I grew up in a circus, remember? So the first time she saw you, it was in a cage. So what?"

"I..." Logan began to say something, and then he hesitated.

"Get over it," said Kurt flatly.

"What do you mean?"

"Let me say that again in terms you will understand: get the fuck over it."

"You're spending too much time around me."

"I will fucking use whatever fucking language I fucking have to use to get this fucking point through your fucking hard head."

"And what point is that? Oh, I mean, what fucking point is that?"

"She saw you at your worst and that bothers you."

Logan didn't respond.

"Logan, whether you decide to be Marie's lover, brother, or father is up to you. I can see you in any of those roles - and any of them would be good for you both. But any fool can see that she loves you."

Logan seemed to think that over. Then he nodded slowly.

Kurt refilled both of their cups from a thermos.

"So how are things working with you and 'Ro?" asked Logan.

"I am ridiculously in love. However, she's killing me with her insatiable sexual demands. I fear that I am not man enough for her."

Logan didn't even try to hide his grin, "For Pete's sake, Kurt, you're an acrobat."

"It is not enough."

"The tail? Invent a new perversion."

"Hmm."

"They'll call it Kurtatio."

"That sounds like a disease."

"Kurtingus?"

"That is even worse."

"Kurtage?"

"That is really not the place in the history books that I had hoped for."

"Kurt, tailed mutants everywhere are depending on you. Stop fighting progress."

"Logan, until now, I simply never realized that you were jealous of my tail."

"Not really. It has a lot of style, but it'd look silly on me."

"Pah. In the future, a tail will be the ultimate sign of distinction. You and your kind will be referred to as 'flat-asses'. Pray that we proud wielders of tails do not decide to cleanse your inferior breed from this earth."

Logan cocked his head at Kurt, "How do you do that, Kurt?"

"Do what?"

"Not care about how you look. At the school, the kids who have physical mutations are all torn up about it. Hell, the kids with bad acne are worked up about that. But you just blow the whole thing off."

Kurt made a dismissive gesture with his hand, "In the circus, the odd is normal."

"You're not in a circus any more."

"No, but perhaps I choose to have the circus in me."

Logan thought about that. And then he nodded.


End file.
